to walk the audience through the positions which the romney/ryan ticket has taken for 99% of the campaign so far in the last 18 months on tax cuts, on obama care, on dodd-frank, and by the way, on women's health. that's number one. number two, i think would be to raise the question perhaps at the end of the debate or make the point that each of these two guys on the stage is a heartbeat away from the presidency and therefore for the audience and the nation watching, how do they feel about the fitness of each of these two to be on a moment's notice the president of the united states. >> roger, what about the question that came up again and again at the beginning of the presidential debate which is you say it's a $5 trillion tax cut, romney said it's not. he said it was this, it's this back and forth. does biden have to say here's what you're saying right now, which is you'll bring down rates but at the same time you'll be closing loopholes. how do you get into that and what's the winning strategy with it? because the back and forth was -- >> again, becky, nobody's asking me but i

aggression really going after paul ryan almost from the beginning. and going after mitt romney in a way that president obama didn't do and wishes he had done in denver last week. we've seen some movement toward mitt romney in the polls. you saw that when joe biden raised the 47% video and went very hard about the values that mitt romney expressing there. but of course that provided an opening for paul ryan to come back at joe biden and his reputation for say things in the exactly the right way. >> i think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way. >> but i always say what i mean. >> now, that was a very funny line by paul ryan, but what you saw was then vice president biden picked up and continued to go aggressively as he did all night after paul ryan. and he said it was the republican ticket that was being disingenuous when paul ryan was criticizing obama's economic record, the economic stimulus and biden says, wait a minute, you asked for some of that stimulus money. >> i love my friend here. i'm not allowed to show letters, but

course, the romney campaign emphasizing that paul ryan is a guy who hasn't had a debate, maybe since high school. so he's debating against joe biden. >> debated -- we've tried to debate ryan here and we've seen him debate with other people, and he's -- i don't know. >> eamon, what about ohio, though? we've talked with chuck todd about this. he sees a way to win without ohio. but basically have to win eight or nine other states. so it's a much more complicated road to the white house if you don't win ohio. so he had said -- he told us a week or two ago that romney would have to make a decision as to whether the pull out of ohio and go for the other states. >> on a couple of polls. >> yeah, it's off the table at this point. >> that's got to be off the table right now. ohio is the linchpin for everything in this campaign. that's why the president was there yesterday. you saw the president leading in o-h-i-o cheer. he needs the college kids to come through for him. he needs the urban cities in ohio to turn out with big, big numbers. otherwise this thing gets very tricky for the president

-- >> axelrod. >> -- governor romney changed his position in that debate radically. first of all he said he would sign the ryan budget which has a 20% tax cut across the board for everybody including the richest americans. number two he never explained and the president didn't call him on it how he'll account for that almost $5 trillion cut, plus the $2 trillion in military spending that they advocate which the defense department and the generals haven't even asked for. there's been no explanation of that and that's a pretty important issue. the president didn't do a good job framing that issue. there's no question. >> you're such a savvy politician. you're the best, and you know, if you lose a game and say well the other guy cheated that makes you look bad. there's no upside to that. you should be advising his people that's not the way to do this. >> and joe, one other thing i want to say, i think jim realized this, i was around for the, president reagan's first re-election debate, you recall he gave a terrible performance, he wandered in his closing, almost looked like he didn't know wher